Upgrading a Raspberry Pi from Wheezy to Jessie
I recently realized that one of my Raspberry Pi’s running Network Caller ID (NCID) was running an unsupported version of Debian/Raspian and needed to be upgraded. The first instructions that Google listed omitted some steps that I knew should be included, so I have put together this page with the procedure that I used. The full (and best) document is the official guide on Debian.org.
Backup the Working System
Before doing any upgrade, you should do a backup of the system. In the case of a Raspberry Pi, it is easy to clone the SD, pull the original and upgrade the clone. Since this was a very minimal installation, I chose to backup only the /etc/ncid/ directory to the Subversion server that I use to keep modified configuration files. An ancient saying among system programs was “tape is cheap (no matter how much it costs).” You never need a backup until you do, and when you do, you really need it badly.
The upgrade process will remove packages that do not show up as having dependencies, and some packages may have unresolved dependencies. You may get into a situation where you have not recourse but to fall back and do a painstaking package-by-package upgrade.
Make Sure You Have Enough Free Space
Some upgrade programs are smart enough to check for the necessary free space to complete the upgrade. The Debian approach described here is not, and I know from experience that it will get ugly if you do not have enough free space. Make sure that you have plenty of free space before start; use the command
df -h
to find out how much free space you have available. If you are above 80% or so, you will probably have problems. Keep two windows open and at each step in the process run a df -h command to make sure that you have more space than apt-get updateindicates that it will use.
user@thisrpi /etc/apt/sources.list.d $ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 13G 3.8G 8.4G 31% /
devtmpfs 214M 0 214M 0% /dev
tmpfs 44M 240K 44M 1% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 87M 0 87M 0% /run/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p5 60M 20M 40M 33% /boot
Make Sure You Have Time
The upgrade process may take a few hours, depending upon which Raspberry Pi model you have, the speed of your connection, and the complexity of your installation. Make sure that you have time to do this, and something else to work on while watching the console messages scroll past.
Upgrade the Current Release
The first step is to upgrade to current maintenance on the old release:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
The next step will remove some unused dependencies. This sometimes breaks things if you have optional software installed outside the standard installer, and sometimes breaks dependencies even for software that was installed with the installer. Make sure you have a backup. This step is not absolutely necessary, but can reduce the upgrade time in later steps.
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get clean
Upgrade the /etc/apt Configuration Files
Next, upgrade the /etc/apt/sources.list file to change wheezy to jessie, then do the same for all files in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory.
Upgrade the System
This is the point of no return; make sure that you have a backup and sufficient free space. To upgrade the basic system, use the commands
sudo apt-get update
Some items may not update; raspberrypi.<collabora.com has been deprecated, so you will need comment it out in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/collabora.list. When you have resolved all repository issues so that you do not get errors, proceed with
sudo apt-get upgrade
When this is complete run the commands
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove
Reboot and Test
At this point, you should be ready to reboot the system. Test all of your applications to make sure that they are working properly–especially those installed outside the installer.
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Configure Network Caller ID (NCID) to work with an OBi202
If you have an OBi202 (or other ObiHai/Polycom device), you do not need a modem to get Network Caller ID to work with your phone system, at least for reporting purposes, though for automatic hangup, you will still need to attach a modem. In most circumstances, this is not of much use, but if you want to measure the effectiveness of a service like NoMoRoBo, you will need to do this. Because NoMoRoBo hangs up before NCID registers the call via the modem, you will need to capture the call via the Polycom (previously ObiHai) device if you want to identify calls that NoMoRoBo kills before NCID recognizes the call and hangs up.
The obi2ncid gateway provided with NCID can read and parse the syslog from the Polycom device and report the calls that are killed before NCID can recognize the call.
The discussion that follows assumes that you have already installed NCID.
Set up obi2ncid.conf
To set this up, configure the /etc/ncid/obi2ncid.conf file. In most cases you can keep the defaults but in almost all cases you will want to update the identifiers for each line on the ObiHai device to match the extension or number that you are using:
# Defaults: SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4
linesp1 = "Home"
linesp2 = "Work"
linesp3 = "Fax1"
linesp4 = "Fax2"
Configure ObiHai Device for Syslog
Next, you will need to log in to the Polycom device to and change the destination IP address and port for the syslog to match the IP address of your NCID server and the port that the obi2ncid program listens:
Start the obi2ncid Service
Finally, you will need to start the obi2ncid service:
sudo service obi2ncid start
Interpreting the Results
Once you have this set up, you will get additional call information in the NCID client displays if your provider has been blocking calls before NCID registers them:
- For calls that NoMoRoBo hangs up, you will get one entry from the ObiTalk device.
- For calls that NoMoRoBo does not block, you will get one entry from ObiTalk and one from the NCID modem (ncidd).
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Upgrading from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04
After putting it off as long as possible, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04; there were just too many things where I needed the newer software levels in 16.04. Fortunately, this upgrade went quite smoothly unlike my experience moving from 12.04 to 14.04. The article that follows is a discussion of the upgrade steps specific to 14.04 to 16.04, but this is also probably useful for any upgrade.
One useful step that I did not do but highly recommend is deleted old Linux kernel images, as this would have cut hours off of the upgrade process.
Backup
There are a variety of ways to back up a system. I use the following to maintain multiple copies of files:
- Clonezilla for disk-level backups.
- Duplicity for both local and off-site backups.
- Subversion for code. While this is not truly a backup, it provides an easy way to copy the current version of my files.
- Box, OwnCloud and other cloud services.
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Writing an Article Using the Joomla Frontend
Joomla has both a “frontend” of general user interface for writing aritcles and a “backend,” or administrator interface. The administrator interface has potentially more options and can be more confusing for new users. The tutorial that follows describes how to write a basic article for your organization’web site using the frontend interface. The website for Hillcrest Toastmasters is used for the example.
Resources Menu Before Logging In
In most web site designs, the options for adding a new article will not be available unless you log in. The example web site is designed so that the options appear under “Resources for Toastmasters” menu; before login, this only shows a menu option for the list of useful articles as shown in Figure 1.
Log In to the Website
To log in on most web sites, there will be a login screen or button. On the example web site, use the login panel at the bottom of the right side of the screen. The “Secret Key” box is used for Two Factor Authentication; this provides security when accessing the web site from a public terminal. If you do not know more, leave the Secret Key blank. For more information see Setting Up Google Authenticator for Joomla.
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Using CiviCRM on Joomla
Most technical professionals end up doing website technical support for one or more community organizations. Most organizations need operational systems for managing members, handling dues payments and event registration fees and calender management, but these organizations frequently do not have the money to pay for a commercial services to support these needs. Many non-profits have adopted CiviCRM to handle these organizational capabilities. Although CiviCRM runs on Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal, most CiviCRM installations are on Drupal which is beyond the technical capability of many small organizations.
Although Wordpress is a popular CMS for small organizations, it does not have the robust permissions system that both Drupal and Joomla have and is not well-suited to CiviCRM installations; in Wordpress, controlling access to sensitive information would be difficult, unreliable, or impossible. Because of the migration issues between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, Joomla may actually be a good alternative for Drupal 7 installations that do not want to make or cannot make the conversion to Drupal 8.
The article that follows describes the basic features of CiviCRM, how you can use the Joomla permissions system to control sensitive information, and how you can use Joomla menu options to present CiviCRM capabilities to end users.
CiviCRM is a Non-profit Oriented Customer Relationship Management System
CiviCRM provides both backend administrative tools that are accessible through the Joomla backend to users with administrative privileges, and frontend information and registration tools that are accessible through the Joomla frontend either publicly or to users with front-end privileges. For many non-profit community organizations these two capabilities are critical. There are several vendors that host CiviCRM installations, so if your organization loses the technical person who manages the CiviCRM installation, there is a fall-back alternative that is competitively priced compared to commercial membership management solutions.
Administering a CiviCRM installation is not a trivial undertaking; there are many decisions to be made for member types, document types, case types and numerous other things, so an organization must have a good technical succession plan in place before making the decision to implement a CiviCRM system. This is true of any membership management system.
Perhaps the biggest consideration in hosting a CiviCRM system for membership management will depend upon the risk of private data compromises and whether or not the organization can protect itself technically and legally from the risk of compromise.
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